School is pointless

By Rayn Samson, Pune

At the risk of sounding like just another rebellious student, I’m going to make a rather bold claim: school is pointless. Yes, actually pointless. I’m sure you’ve already heard that education is ‘breeding conformists’, or ‘killing our children’s creativity’; these are the usual complaints. Yes, they’re valid complaints, but they only scratch the surface when it comes to how redundant (and even counterproductive) our education system is.

Let me dispel a few counterarguments before I begin, as I’m sure many would still have their doubts over my initial claim. The two most common arguments are (i) you need to do well in school to get into college, and (ii) you need a college degree to get a good job. Most arguments I’ve heard are usually some variation of these.

Let me work backwards, starting by dispelling (ii). The sad reality is that a college degree, barring medicine and a handful of others, does not make people more employable. More people are being pushed through college every year, and when employers have a vast array of college graduates to choose from, the applicant’s’ degree is often overlooked.

“But it’s still a minimum requirement, right?” No, it’s not. Again, this is sensitive to the field you’re getting into and the country you live in, but for an ever-growing number of fields, be it programming or plane-flying, or being a chef or a dental assistant, the fact is that if you still have no idea what to do with your life as an early adult, there are plenty of things you can do as long as you have decent communication skills and are willing to enroll in a training program. Also, they’ll give you a modest pay-check until you have things figured out. If you think the careers I mentioned were particularly uninteresting — reality check — any job you get with a college degree will be uninteresting if you still haven’t found the thing you love doing. Plus, you’ll be in a mountain of debt.

I mentioned that the necessity of a college degree for greater job prospects is sensitive to the field of the degree. My earlier argument was perhaps more relevant to fields like business, where just about any successful businessman would agree that pursuing a degree will be the first and perhaps largest financial blunder in your business career. The fact is, business — like many other fields — is best learned on the job. You simply can’t study it in an artificial environment and expect to be successful when you’re out there in the cold. Oh, and have I mentioned the mountain of debt over your shoulder?

“But surely you need a degree for research or medicine, no?” Yes, perhaps I’d agree with you here. Becoming a doctor or a scientist (or other fields where a degree is actually required) takes countless hours of instruction and practice, and the skills needed to get into these fields can only really be learned in a guided, systematic way (though I’d still argue that they don’t take as many hours as most people think).

The problem is that most students are cramming through AP classes, learning instruments, playing sports, and running for school president just so they can put it on their application. Incidentally, students here in India are doing just the opposite in order to make time for studies.

Both of these approaches have the same problem, however: they both strip students of their autonomy. Parents and society are pushing students into building a strong college application so that they get into a college which they’ve been convinced they have to go to. Ironically, the single most important thing any good college looks for in their applicants is whether the applicant’s motivation is genuine and not influenced by parents and society!

I’ll let Ben Jones, a former member of the admissions committee from MIT, reflect my argument. This was a response he gave when he got a question about the importance of Advanced Placement classes to being admitted at MIT:

“Based on the thousands of apps I saw last year both in selection committee and as a reader, I can tell you that the average # of AP’s for admitted kids was 5 or 6 (that’s total for all 4 years of HS — i.e. 1–2 per year if evenly distributed). Many admits (most likely the majority) had no college classes. The most common AP’s taken were in math and science (no surprise, it’s MIT). The overwhelming majority got 4’s and 5’s on all tests.

I’ll pause here to add that I frequently saw kids with perfect SAT scores and perfect grades and a gazillion AP classes get rejected. Why? Because often these kids knew how to grind, but brought nothing else to the table. And that’s not who we’re looking for at MIT. We admit kids who show genuine passion. Sure AP’s can be one of many passion indicators — but I emphasize one of many.

When I was on the road, kids asked me repeatedly whether or not they should take a given AP class.

“Well,” I’d respond, “would you be taking it because you genuinely want to, or simply because you think it will get you into college?”

Sometimes they didn’t know the difference, which is a tragedy that deserves its own thread. But I digress.

And this is where you all start saying that adcoms are talking out of both sides of our mouths: we encourage kids to follow their hearts in the choices they make, and then as adcoms we want to see that they’ve taken “the most challenging courseload.”

To which I say: guys, I work for MIT! If a kid doesn’t want to be taking a challenging courseload in high school, that kid is certainly not going to be happy here.

Quite simply, the students who are happiest here are those who thrive on challenge. Most of our admits have taken AP math and science because they would have been bored silly in the regular classes. Indeed, they genuinely wanted to take those classes. They don’t look at MIT as the prize; they look at MIT as the logical next step. It’s an important distinction.

That said, AP’s are not the only way to demonstrate that one is passionate and likes challenge. Read Anthony’s story for an example.

When faced with the choice, we will always choose “the right match*” over numbers. We’re not lying when we say that. You’ve heard me beat that sentiment to death in other threads, so I won’t do so here.

(*Match = mission, collaborative spirit, hands-on, balance, character, and passion, among others.)

But the reality is that when you have 10,500+ applications for ~1000 spots and 70% of the pool has great numbers, your pool is going to have plenty of kids who have the passion and the match and the scores/grades/AP’s. So we admit those kids — what other choice do we have?

But then (understandably) you guys say “Look! You need X, Y, and Z to get into MIT!” To clarify, we don’t require those things; many of our admits just happen to have them. And, I might add, for the right reasons.

This brings me to the more important part, where we toss my affiliation with MIT out the window and I give you my thoughts as a parent.

There is only one coin. There are many sides to the coin, but there is only one coin. And you can flip it however you like.

So when a parent says to me, “Why does HYPSM (Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, MIT, etc.) put so much emphasis on AP’s?” I reply “Why do you put so much emphasis on HYPSM?” When a parent says “My kid’s value as a person/student shouldn’t be measured by how many AP’s he/she has taken” I say “…and your kid’s value as a person/student shouldn’t be measured by whether or not he/she goes to HYPSM.” I could go on and on.

There are literally hundreds of amazing colleges and universities out there (some of which actually admit kids with no AP’s!). Many of them would actually be better matches for your child. Many of them would provide your child with a better education. Most importantly, many of them would ultimately give your child a greater sense of happiness and fulfillment. The right match will do that.

And the match goes both ways. We try to determine if your kid is a good match for MIT. Your kid should be trying to determine which school is the best match for him/her. As a parent, what are you doing to help him/her figure that out?

Here’s a hint: if you’re spending time obsessing that a lack of AP’s is going to keep your kid out of Stanford, you’re missing the point.

As I told the kids in my blog, I had a wonderful college experience that I wouldn’t trade for anything, at a school that is currently only #23 on the USNWR LAC list (The HORROR!). I got a phenomenal education and can certainly hold my own against any Ivy grad. Bonus: I even got to grow up, get married, have kids, buy a house, land a great job, and enjoy life.

I took one AP class in high school.

Make sure your kids are choosing their schools for the right reasons. Name, status, “brand” — these are not the right reasons. Let your kids be kids. Let them follow their hearts. Encourage them to have a present, not just a future. Don’t let them define themselves by which colleges accept them — and don’t let them define themselves by doing things only to get into certain colleges.

The machine is fed from all sides. USNWR, the media in general, the GC’s, the parents, the colleges and universities, the high-priced independent counselors, the test prep people…

My kids are still many years away from college, and I’m no expert on the parent side of this process. But I do know one thing: I will fight to protect them from all of this, to help them with perspective and clarity. Because if I don’t, who will?

Because if we don’t, who will?

http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/many_ways_to_define_the_best

(I was only going to include the most relevant points of this blogpost, but found myself scrolling until I copied the whole thing!)

If your kid is loving school, loves to study hard, and has a clear idea of what they want to do so early on, then great. If they keep doing what they’re doing they just might get into a place like MIT. But if they’re in the majority who do not fall into that category, going to school isn’t helping. It’s not helping with their job prospects, and unless you’re applying to an Indian college which admits students purely on the basis of their mark sheet (which I would never recommend), it’s not helping with their college prospects either. A student’s application for ‘the right match’ would be much stronger if they were just themselves; average grades or even no grades perhaps, but a childhood full of experiences that shaped them as individuals.

Somewhat disturbing, I think, is that childhoods are being squandered as we speak: countless hours are spent by force on this fruitless drudgery, occasionally leading to depression and even suicide, and at the end we get graduates who still don’t know what the hell they’re doing on this planet.

This is where I bring in my personal experience as an unschooler, and I only bring in this experience as a taste of what an alternative could look like. I spent my childhood playing. Playing and, playing, and more play. No homework, no classes, no waking up early in the morning, ever. No pressure from parents or society about what to do with my future; the present was all that mattered. I never got labelled ‘lazy’ even though I played video games all day (I played other stuff too, okay!) and guess what? When I did decide to start studying, I hardly felt like I was behind in anything. Sure, there was some catching up to do, but it was quite trivial, really. I don’t think I ever worked harder than most ‘good’ students (I cringe having to use that term), yet here I am. I feel fully functional in society and at school. I think I’m even better off in some ways because I don’t dread school like most people do; they’ve endured this nonsense for twelve years after all. (you guys need a hug, really.)

I’d like to expand the thought on not dreading school. More important than encouraging our kids to do things (math, science, art, music, sports, etc.), is ensuring that they don’t dread these things. This is just my opinion of course, but think about it: if you’re forced to do something, you’re much more likely to develop a distaste towards it. Sure there is a chance, if someone pushes you into trying something that you fall in love with it, but consider the alternative: you don’t like something, and yet you do it every day; even worse you get up dreadfully early in the morning to do it every day. Chances are that the moment you’re not obligated to do it anymore, you’ll never touch it again for the rest of your life. Yet we still wonder why people hate math or sports; yet we still force our children through the same thing in the hope that they’ll turn out different. Far better I think, is to give kids exposure. Provide them an education, not prescribe it. If your kid doesn’t like sports, at least she would be more open to trying it as an adult if we didn’t force her to do it against her innocent and delicate will for twelve years.

My final note is from an interview with a North Korean defector living in South Korea. When asked about the people of South Korea, he said he felt sorry for them: “they’re so busy competing with each other that they lose out on the most important things,”

In his third year of college, the interviewee contemplated suicide. When asked why, he said he couldn’t compete with South Koreans to get ahead in life. He also suffers from haemophilia, and thought he couldn’t make it in South Korean society because of his condition. “But at that moment I felt a sense of regret. Other than the moment of arriving at the Incheon airport, getting my social security and student cards, I had no other happy memories. I finally have freedom after risking my life, but why was my life so miserable? I asked myself that question and that’s when I realized that I was pursuing the same materialistic goals as my South Korean friends were …. When I first came to South Korea I laughed at those who committed suicide, but finally I understood their pain.”

The defector described his life in North Korea just as bad (if not worse) than our media portrays it in his two-part interview:

Part I: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyqUw0WYwoc

Part II: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhmzpMP3bEE

When growing up in North Korea — easily the most authoritarian nation on the planet — doesn’t make you contemplate suicide but living as a student in a Westernized education system does, then we know we’re doing something wrong.